Ernst Haas’s American West – in pictures
The acclaimed Austrian-born photographer, who was behind Life magazine’s first ever all-colour photographic essay, moved to the US in 1951 and captured Americana in the hills and in the towns. His work has been celebrated in a new book Ernst Haas: The American West which is out now
Main image: Wild horses gallop across countryside in a blur of speed. Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty ImagesThu 15 Dec 2022 01.11 EST
TV And Shadows, a television set by a window, California, circa 1975.
‘I never really wanted to be a photographer. It slowly grew out of the compromise of a boy who desired to combine two goals – explorer or painter,’ Haas saidPhotograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
Share on Facebook Share on TwitterRock Mountain, August 1977, Spider Rock in the Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, casts its shadow over the strata beneath.
‘I wanted to travel, see and experience. What better profession could there be than the one of a photographer, almost a painter in a hurry, overwhelmed by too many constantly changing impressions?’Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
Share on Facebook Share on TwitterRoute 66 Albuquerque, traffic in the streets of Albuquerque, New Mexico, after a heavy downpour.
‘All my inspirational influences came much more from all the arts than from photo magazines’Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
Share on Facebook Share on TwitterSeattle Settlement, a little girl in Native American dress stands in front of a Plymouth Valiant and a teepee in Seattle, Washington state, 1975.
‘Every one of us wants to take beautiful, striking, extraordinary pictures. Every one of us is struggling with his own style’Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
Share on Facebook Share on TwitterBuffalo Winter 1966, a buffalo seeks shelter under trees during a snowstorm in Yellowstone national park. ‘
A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?’Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
Share on Facebook Share on TwitterRailroad Sky, low-angle sunlight reflected off railroad tracks, New Mexico, circa 1960.
‘Bored with obvious reality, I find my fascination in transforming it into a subjective point of view’Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
Share on Facebook Share on TwitterFlood Lands, 1963: a part of Monument Valley, a Navajo reservation.
‘Without touching my subject I want to come to the moment when, through pure concentration of seeing, the composed picture becomes more made than taken’Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
Share on Facebook Share on TwitterFree Spirits, 1978, wild horses gallop across countryside in a blur of speed. ‘
There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are’Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
Share on Facebook Share on TwitterSnail’s Pace, 1960, a house being transported on a trailer along a road in Nevada.
‘Photography is a bridge between science and art. It brings to science what it needs most, the artistic sense, and to art the proof that nothing can be imagined which cannot be matched in the counterpoints of nature’Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
Share on Facebook Share on TwitterWestern Landscape, an aerial view of cloud and rock formations, western USA, circa 1960. ‘
Important is the end result of your work: the opus. Therefore, I want to be remembered much more by a total vision than a few perfect single pictures’Photograph: Ernst Haas/Getty Images
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